How did you learn how to switch? Any tips that aren't shared in standard guides?
We started with co-fronting which we did exclusively for a solid 8 or 9 months, several hours a day, with time set aside most days to hang out in a voice call with other plural friends so it was expected and anticipated and desired to have non-Willows type or talk or at least be proxied. We started with proxying in text and voice, worked up to being able to let them type, then got to full co-fronting where they could talk and figure out their own voice. Varyn, in this, was especially adamant about figuring out how to do things on his own in a way that felt natural to him. A lot of it was done with tactile and visual mental effort - the mental feeling of shoving us Willows aside to make room, of pushing us back and away, or settling in with their eyes behind the body's eyes, filling the body with their envisioned essence. Sometimes the mental sensations were what would be extremely rudely violent in real life - Varyn imagining picking up us-Willows and shoving us as hard as he could to the side, and when he felt us slipping back into control, pushing us back into the passenger's seat with all his might. But we were good with that. Not just accepting, but willing to take that kind of energy and put it into relaxing and relinquishing control.
After we got really good at that, we started working on getting us Willows out of the body entirely so we'd stop slipping back into control. One thing we'd done a lot, ever since first creating Jas way back when we were 15 and carried on after we discovered and embraced our plurality, was envisioning everyone but us as being in what we call "mini-form" - little hand-high versions of us all interacting in the external world. So when we tried to do full switches, one of the first things we tried was getting us into mini form outside of the body. Which worked pretty well, but we'd still slip back into front pretty easily. We talked about this with one of our plural friends and they mentioned median systems, and quite quickly we realized "Willow" was actually "Willows". So then we worked on addressing all the parts of us - not just the four of us, but each of us's little parts - addressing concerns, relieving anxieties, giving reassurances, and collecting full enthusiastic consent from our whole gestalt self. And then Varyn would envision gathering up every piece of us, going through our whole mental bodymap, feeling for each of us and getting us all squooshed together, and with a huge burst of mental effort, shoving us out of the body and simultaneously sliding himself into the bodymap and filling the whole body with his essence and spirit and mind. Or instead of himself, with whoever else wanted to be switched in.
And that worked pretty well for a long time and we got used to it. We Willows couldn't maintain our presence outside of the body for long before we'd go temporarily dormant/asleep, but we all liked that well enough.
We Willows felt unsatisfied though after awhile. We really, really wanted to be able to spend time in the innerworld with everyone else. It wasn't possible though no matter how much we tried, until we remembered and reconnected with a piece of the innerworld we'd created/stumbled on in our teens, a place we called The Cove. This place we could go to, or at least envision ourselves going to while still being connected to the body. It took months on this alone - all told, several years - but we did eventually figure out the right combination of sensation and visualization and effort to move our awareness and sense of self into that part of our innerworld, where only we could go. It took even more effort from Varyn and us than it took getting us out of the body and into mini-form or asleep, but we figured it out.
A couple months after we figured that out, we were talking with a friend about The Cove and how it changed to suit our needs and remarked that it was almost like the place had a guardian spirit - which was the realization we needed to hear, faintly at first and better and better over time, Cove Presence, who is a mix between being a guardian spirit of, the personification of, and the embodiment of The Cove. We referred to them by their initials for awhile, but CP is also a rather unsavory abbreviation so they changed their name to Coriander.
There's quite a bit of lore about them and The Cove and how it ties into the rest of our innerworld/paracosm but in brief, The Cove is half in the physical realm and half in the spiritual realm. Coriander was, a very very long time ago, a lost paladin of sorts who was shipwrecked on the semi-sentient island, and eventually became its caretaker and, after they died, its immortal guardian. The Cove is a sacred place for the lost to rest and recover, and is only accessible to those with a certain... Not exactly "pure-heartedness" or "wisdom" but that's the closest I can get to an English translation of camben-mindedness. You have to be aligned to the principle of guarding life, before the island that is all about guarding life will let you in. You have to resonate with it, not just the island itself, but with its twin souls - that of the physical land and its spiritual land, with its own soul and its guardian soul.
Anyway. We Willows are the only regulars, though sometimes we can get little glimpses in from some of our other Crewmates.
About half the time we switch out now, we go to The Cove. About half of what's left we're co-fronting or out in mini-form, and the last quarter of the time we're dormant.
We're still working on being able to go to other parts of the innerworld - we've successfully been able to for very short periods of time, but it's very difficult and hard to maintain.
